Just over a week ago, CVS Health announced that it had closed the deal on the merger heard ’round the world: the highly anticipated acquisition of insurance giant Aetna. CVS Health President and Chief Executive Officer Larry Merlo said in a statement that the merger will “transform the consumer health experience and build healthier communities through a new, innovative healthcare model that is local, easier to use, less expensive and puts consumers at the center of their care.”

The opportunities to communicate with physicians and other key decision-makers in person has dwindled over the last decade, according to ZS’s AffinityMonitor™ and AccessMonitor™ reports, which study doctors’ true behaviors and their affinities for different promotional channels. Drilling down into particular specialties, we see a similar picture—and even more drastic declines. In oncology, for example, 24% of oncologists are “accessible” today, compared with the more than 90% of oncologists who met with most pharma reps in 2009. As a result, pharma companies have largely increased their reliance on digital promotion, but are pharma companies paying attention to doctors’ cues?

Single-physician and small-group practices aren’t going away entirely, but each year, more doctors merge into large group practices. Some will form enormous, multi-specialty practices, and in many cases, these group practices are integrating with hospital systems to form networks across settings of care.

The one-to-one selling approach to doctors that the industry has used for decades isn’t completely dead. But that approach is no longer as impactful as it was in the past, when practitioners had more significant influence on drug usage. The question on the mind of most biopharma sales leaders today is this: How can our sales force interact with these new physician practices and health networks in which physicians are employees?

Just over a week ago, CVS Health announced that it had closed the deal on the merger heard ’round the world: the highly anticipated acquisition of insurance giant Aetna. CVS Health President and Chief Executive Officer Larry Merlo said in a statement that the merger will “transform the consumer health experience and build healthier communities through a new, innovative healthcare model that is local, easier to use, less expensive and puts consumers at the center of their care.”

The opportunities to communicate with physicians and other key decision-makers in person has dwindled over the last decade, according to ZS’s AffinityMonitor™ and AccessMonitor™ reports, which study doctors’ true behaviors and their affinities for different promotional channels. Drilling down into particular specialties, we see a similar picture—and even more drastic declines. In oncology, for example, 24% of oncologists are “accessible” today, compared with the more than 90% of oncologists who met with most pharma reps in 2009. As a result, pharma companies have largely increased their reliance on digital promotion, but are pharma companies paying attention to doctors’ cues?

Single-physician and small-group practices aren’t going away entirely, but each year, more doctors merge into large group practices. Some will form enormous, multi-specialty practices, and in many cases, these group practices are integrating with hospital systems to form networks across settings of care.

The one-to-one selling approach to doctors that the industry has used for decades isn’t completely dead. But that approach is no longer as impactful as it was in the past, when practitioners had more significant influence on drug usage. The question on the mind of most biopharma sales leaders today is this: How can our sales force interact with these new physician practices and health networks in which physicians are employees?